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Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
#23289 09/01/12 11:49 PM
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I'm running OS X 10.58 on a late-2008 MacBook Pro. My HDD has 35 GB available out of a total capacity of 297 GB, but the iDefrag 2.0.5 free demo says the free space is 93% fragmented, and I'm wondering if Mac will do the upgrade to 10.6 okay with his workspace in such a mess.

I'd like to defrag the disk anyway, handling large (video) files as I do, and seeing the spinning "busy" cursor (the "beach ball") too often even in Safari (5.0.6, maintained according to the Macattorney procedures, mostly) but according to the Coriolis website, iDefrag now requires 10.6.

If I merely proceed with the upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 with this fragmented free space, am I headed for catastrophe?

Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
Jack Reed #23292 09/02/12 03:13 PM
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I can't answer your question about fragmentation but I urge you to have a complete backup before you attempt to upgrade. Do you have a Time Machine backup? Have you cloned the drive?

I had no problem upgrading from 10.5.8 to 10.6 but I had both types of backups and I rebuilt the directory with Disk Warrior before attempting it. I never checked for defragmentation but I had so much headroom that it probably wasn't necessary.



Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
jchuzi #23294 09/02/12 04:08 PM
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Disk and/or file fragmentation is not the threat it used to be and whether or not it is necessary has become arguable. That said, I still defragment my files and the disk once or twice a year more out of old habits than any real or perceived necessity and I have never bothered to defragment before or after an OS upgrade or update and I have never had any problems. However, I have a large hard drive and it is less than 60% occupied so there is plenty of free space.

Given the high level of file fragmentation and relatively small free space on your HD if I were in your shoes I would
  1. run permission repair
  2. be sure I had a current backup or clone of your HD
  3. use CleanApp or a similar utility to perform a thorough housecleaning of your hard drive, deleting any unused applications, duplicated data files, unused preference and support files, and any other junk files you no longer need. The goal of all this being to free up as much disk space as possible.
  4. run a complete suite of tests and repairs on the drive using DiskWarrior, Drive Genius, or TechTool Pro to be certain the volume structure is in pristine condition
  5. use Drive Genius or TechTool Pro to defragment the files
  6. use Drive Genius or TechTool Pro to defragment the disk
  7. download and run the OS X 10.8.1 (Mountain Lion) installer from the App Store
While I am not certain all this is absolutely necessary before performing the upgrade it cannot hurt and it may well prevent potential installation glitches and it may result in better system performance overall.


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
joemikeb #23303 09/03/12 12:29 AM
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Quote:
...download and run the OS X 10.8.1 (Mountain Lion) installer from the App Store

Since Jack Reed is running OS X 10.5.8 now, the Mac App Store and OS X 10.8.1 are not available options. wink



dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
dkmarsh #23304 09/03/12 01:04 AM
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Originally Posted By: dkmarsh

Quote:
...download and run the OS X 10.8.1 (Mountain Lion) installer from the App Store

Since Jack Reed is running OS X 10.5.8 now, the Mac App Store and OS X 10.8.1 are not available options. wink

How quickly we forget! blush confused


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
Jack Reed #23305 09/03/12 04:37 AM
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The short answer is yes, OS X will install on a fragmented hard disk. It will also attempt to defragment certain critical system files automatically, without direct intervention.


Photo gallery, all about me, and more: www.xeromag.com/franklin.html
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
joemikeb #23307 09/03/12 09:56 AM
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Jack Reed wants to upgrade to 10.6, not 10.8. See his original post.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
jchuzi #23310 09/03/12 07:12 PM
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You're correct, but do you think for 1/2 of 1 second that joemike would advise anything short of 10.8.x other than under the most compelling of circumstances?


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
artie505 #23341 09/09/12 09:23 PM
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Sorry to have let my end of this die for a time, but I went from posting here to browsing discussions.apple.com, where I gathered that 10.6.8 might not be too ambitious a goal for my older machine, especially since I want to edit video. I thought that was taxing enough, without the latest and greatest OS I might not really need possibly bogging it down. Am I too cautious?

Anyway, I'm not too proud to admit I just forgot my post here, but I am glad to see this discussion, because it confirmed some of what I've ben thinking and, as always, directed me to ways to manage my Mac better.

By way of preparation for the upgrade, I have been using Time Machine for a long time, even recovering from some accidental deletions in the past, so I felt covered there, and I let DiscWarrior 4.2 work on my disc's directory, which was not bad anyway.

Then I tried running iDefrag 2.2.0 with its "Quick (on-line)" algorithm and found my free space fragmentation rose to 98%.

Thinking, fragmented or not, more free space would help the installation, I nudged it from 35 GB up to 42 GB (with some help from OmniDiskSweeper; thanks for suggesting CleanApp, I must try it) by deleting some duplicate video files etc.

Then I learned how to use iDefrag off-line and, still being cautious, I chose the "Compact" algorithm, said "to improve free space fragmentation without running a full optimization", and reduced the fragmentation to 1.3% (while leaving the rest of the disk pretty fragmented; this took about four hours even so).

Thinking the OS X 10.6.3 Installer would probably quit safely if it couldn't proceed for some reason, I upgraded in about 40 minutes, then updated to 10.6.8 (and Safari 5.0.5).

So far, so good. I don't much like the pop-up menus you get from the Dock icons - in Leopard 10.5.8, they were very simple and easy to use; now, in Snow Leopard 10.6.8 the screen dims, icons move, you have to navigate the cursor around a right angle - too complicated! Or does all this business serve a purpose?

But I run a widely-supported OS again, right? And Mac seems happier than before.

Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
Jack Reed #23342 09/09/12 09:41 PM
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> (and Safari 5.0.5)

If Software Update doesn't offer you Safari 5.1.7 you can find it at Safari 5.1.7 for Snow Leopard.

Edit: Running the 10.6.8 updater after updating to Safari 5.1.7 causes a reversion to v 5.0.5, and Software Update doesn't pick up on it.

Last edited by artie505; 09/09/12 09:46 PM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
artie505 #23343 09/09/12 10:50 PM
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Thanks for the link and the tip, artie505! I've got Software Update running on its weekly schedule, so I'll give it a chance. (When I was in 10.6.3 briefly, the reversion to Safari 4.0.4 - from 5.0.6 I had on OS X 10.5.8 - reminded me how much I like Safari extensions for calming web pages and such.)


Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
Jack Reed #23348 09/10/12 12:41 AM
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You're welcome.

The link is kinda critical, because for some obscure reason the Safari 5.1.7 updater can no longer be found on Apple's download site; it took me some doing to track it down.

(Have you checked your current version? The tip/link may be of -0- import.)


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
artie505 #23358 09/10/12 05:32 PM
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Quote:
...for some obscure reason the Safari 5.1.7 updater can no longer be found on Apple's download site...

Hmm...what procedure did you follow? I found it on the second page of results when searching support.apple.com/downloads/ for safari. (That set of search results was at support.apple.com/downloads/#safari.)



dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
Re: Upgrade from 10.58 to 10.6 on a fragmented disk?
dkmarsh #23360 09/10/12 07:10 PM
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Thanks for posting that.

Until sometime veeery recently, last night I suspect (Edit: I've given it some thought, and I remember searching before I posted.), only Safari 5.1.7 for Windows came up at <support.apple.com/downloads> in response to searches for Safari, Safari 5.1.7, and Safari 5.1.7 Snow Leopard; I guess somebody realized that the SL version was missing and reinstated it...would have saved me a bunch of search time when I needed it last week had the issue come up sooner.

Last edited by artie505; 09/10/12 09:43 PM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire

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